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Social Shares Signal Search

Everyone is a “Brand Ambassador” Now

Of course you have—Facebook’s carefully calibrated algorithm is making a calculated guess that you’ll be interested in that action that your friend took.

Of course, sometimes Facebook is right and you do care—and sometimes it’s not—but either way, your friend’s action got that content in front of your eyes, didn’t it?

There’s a principle here that you can leverage for your cause: we are all brand ambassadors now.

So, harness that power for good. Ask your employees, friends, supporters, and partners to help your organization and take advantage of the fact that Social Shares Signal Search!

It’s easier than it sounds.

Just tell them that when they interact with one of your social media posts—with a “Like,” comment, share, retweet, click, +1, etc.—they spend only a moment of their time, but greatly increase the odds that more people get to see it, in 2 different ways:

Directly: Obviously, the more your content is shared on social media, the more people are made directly aware of your organization’s content.

Indirectly: Less obviously—but just as important—the more your content is shared on social media, the more Google and other search engines “trust” it.

Audience engagement—“Likes” and interactions with a brand on social—indicate to Google that not only is the content being shared valuable, but also that the content provider is a reliable and authoritative source of information.

Search engines reward brands that have significant referral traffic from social media by giving their content higher rankings in search results.

More Is More…

Because Click Velocity. If a lot of people see and like something, then even more people get the opportunity to see (and hopefully like) it, too.

While this principle applies on all social media channels, it’s especially relevant on Facebook, where by default, the algorithm now causes most of a Page’s fan base not to be shown its posts by default. (You have to pay to reach a larger portion of your fans.)

Facebook only grants significant organic reach to status updates that have already gotten some interaction, so the chance to be seen more widely and gain even more interactions depends upon a post’s “click velocity.” And studies show:

75% of possible engagement that a Facebook post gets are in its first 5 hours.

If someone already “likes” a post, the next person is 32% more likely to also “like” it.

Early shares accumulate over time, generating 25% more likes than posts without that boost.

So, vote with your clicks. There’s strength in numbers. Get your friends and supporters to engage with your organization on social media, particularly shortly after you’ve posted it, and thereby inform their friends—and Google—that your content is worthwhile.